Gwynne Dyer

The Lindsay Post22 March 2011

Last Friday saw the first nationwide protests against the Baath regime in Syria. If these protests develop into a full-scale revolt, the regime's response may dwarf that of Colonel Gaddafy in Libya.

The last time Syrians rebelled, in the city of Hama in 1982, President Hafez al-Assad sent in the army to smash the insurrection. Hama's centre was destroyed by artillery fire, and at least 17,000 people were killed.

The current Syrian ruler, Bashar al-Assad, is allegedly a gentler person than his father Hafez, but the Baath Party still rules Syria, and it is just as ruthless as ever. So what happens if the Syrian revolution gets underway, and the Baath Party starts slaughtering people again? Do the same forces now intervening in Libya get sent to Syria as well?

Syria has four times Libya's population and very serious armed forces. The Baath Party is as centralised and intolerant of dissent as the old Communist parties of Eastern Europe. Moreover, it is controlled internally by a sectarian minority, the Alawis, who fear that they would suffer terrible vengeance if they ever lost power.

The UN Security Council was absolutely right to order the use of "all necessary measures" (i. e. armed force) to stop Gaddafi's regime from attacking the Libyan people. But it does move us all into unknown territory: today Libya, tomorrow Syria?

The "responsibility to protect" concept that underpins the UN decision on Libya was first proposed in 2001 by Lloyd Axworthy, then Canada's foreign minister. He was frustrated by the UN's inability to stop the genocides in Kosovo and Rwanda in the 1990s, and he concluded that the problem was the UN's own rules. So he set out to change them. (...)

(...)Ten out of fifteen Security Council members voted in favour of the action, and the rest, including all four of the emerging great powers, the so-called BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) abstained. But Russia and China didn't veto the action, because they have finally figured out that the new principle will never be used against them.

Nobody will ever attack Russia to make it be nicer to the Chechens, or invade China to make it change its behaviour towards the Tibetans. Great powers are effectively exempt from all the rules if they choose to be because they are so powerful. That's no argument for also exempting less powerful but nastier regimes from the obligation not to murder their own people.

So what about the Syrian regime? The same crude calculation applies. If it's not too tough and powerful to take on, then it will not be allowed to murder its own people. And if it is too big and dangerous, then all the UN members will express their strong disapproval, but they won't actually do anything.